There are many ways to organize your files on your computer and provide shortcuts to them. In this guide, I hope to provide some inspiration; hopefully you can come up with some great ways to access the data on your drive.

I’ve written about how to organize your files in the past and in this guide I will focus mainly on how to get to those files easily without installing any extra software.

Creating Shortcuts to Your Data

I don’t store my personal documents in the conventional place Windows provides. This is because I frequently change operating systems and have different systems on one machine so I need a central repository of files. More information about this can be read here including instructions of how to implement this properly.

First Organize Your Files

I highly recommend organizing your files in an intuitive and efficient manner before working on how to get to them. Below is a screenshot of my E partition which is my media drive on my laptop:

As you can see, I organize my files by media type and I’ve also customized the folder icons.

Creative Shortcuts on Your Desktop

Recently, I’ve taken to using over-sized shortcuts on my desktop. I don’t usually have any icons on my desktop but I’ve found the shortcuts to be both aesthetically pleasing and useful.

(Click to enlarge)

To achieve this effect, do the following:

1. Right-click on the folder, you want to create a shortcut to, and click Create shortcut
2. Copy the shortcut to your desktop
3. Click on a blank space on the desktop, hold the CTRL key, and scroll your wheel mouse to change the size of the icon
4. To remove the shortcut overlay icon, follow this guide

You now have a desktop with oversized and stylish shortcuts.

Create Your Own Shortcut Tool Bar

If you have a setup similar to mine, mentioned above, you can easily make a shortcut to all the folders appear on your taskbar with the icons you previously selected. To achieve the effect shown above, do the following:

1. Right click a blank space on the start menu, select Toolbars > New Toolbar…

   

2. Select the parent folder with the links to your folders you want shortcuts to

   

3. The folder will now appear on your start menu

   

The previous steps may be enough to provide you with a useful shortcut system; to change the text label to icons, do the following:

1. Double-click on the folder name on the start menu to expand to the subfolders
2. Now right click the folder name and deselect Show Text and Show Title

   

3. Resize the toolbar as needed to achieve the following effect:

   

Further Customization

Do you have any other ways to customize your shortcut icons? Do you have a good Dock-style solution or method that does not require extra software? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Further Reading

• Best Windows Freebies and Guides 18 [September 2009]
• Best Windows Freebies and Guides 17 [August 2009]
• Restore Quick Launch Shortcut Icons in Windows Vista [How To]
• XdN Tweaker Customizes Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, and 7
• Changes to mintywhite.com (and my other sites)

Windows, by default, put a small arrow on shortcuts to indicate they are a shortcut and not a file. This feature is very useful and can help you determine what type of file you are dealing with. If you are customizing your desktop or a folder, you may not want these shortcut overlay icons as they may ruin your design. In this guide, you’ll learn how to remove the icons from the shortcuts with a simple program.

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Read the rest of Remove Shortcut Overlay Arrow Icon in Vista [How To]

Many people use Vista’s quick launch feature. The quick launch can be found next to the start menu; however, over time I’ve found myself instructing readers on how to restore these icons if they lose them. The reason I knew how to do this is because I, too, lost them myself! In this guide, you’ll learn how to restore the quick launch icons to the quick launch menu in Windows Vista.

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Read the rest of Restore Quick Launch Shortcut Icons in Windows Vista [How To]

FreeSnap is designed to take the pain out of resizing and moving windows by providing convenient keyboard shortcuts to do the job. If you are someone who likes keyboard shortcuts, you’ll know how much of a pain it is to resize and move windows with the keyboard alone.

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Read the rest of FreeSnap Resizes Your Windows with the Keyboard

nCleaner is a system cleaner, much like CCleaner and Advanced SystemCare. However, nCleaner has a built in file and free space shredder, which is really helpful to protect your previously-deleted sensitive data.

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Read the rest of nCleaner Cleans Junk and Shreds Old Files and Space

I check Gmail a lot and used to have it as a secondary tab in my home page when Firefox starts. I recently decided to try and add Gmail to the desktop context menu and now I want to share this trick with you. I’ve also included a file you can use to add mintywhite.com to your desktop context menu too.

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Read the rest of Shortcut to Any Website on Your Desktop Context Menu [How To]

There are likely some folders on your computer that you spend a great deal of time clicking through folders to get to. Hopefully you have some kind of shortcut set up to get to them.

In this guide you’ll learn how to do one better by customizing the send to menu – enabling you to send files to a folder without opening it; thus, eliminating the need to navigate through your folders all the time.

More Windows Seven Guides

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Read the rest of Customize Windows 7 Send To Menu [How To]

UPDATE: I came across some more shortcuts and I’ve added them to the list.

After playing around with Windows 7, I have found the following new shortcut keys to be useful. Do you know any more?

Further Reading

• Creative Folder Shortcut Links in Vista [How To]
• Remove Shortcut Overlay Arrow Icon in Vista [How To]
• Restore Quick Launch Shortcut Icons in Windows Vista [How To]
• FreeSnap Resizes Your Windows with the Keyboard
• nCleaner Cleans Junk and Shreds Old Files and Space

Windows Explorer has a great feature in Vista: the shortcut menu. This shortcut menu is customizable and can save you a lot of time if you frequently open and close files from specific locations. Learn, in this guide, how to modify this menu.

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Read the rest of Set Shortcuts to Commonly Used Folders in Vista Explorer

For the next week, I’m going to run a series of guides that will help you customize Windows Explorer on your Windows Vista machine.

These guides come from the ‘Windows Vista – Customization Manual’ [Download a copy now]. The customization manual runs over the basics of customizing your Windows Vista machine to make it more personal. This guide is free of charge to all mintywhite.com readers.

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Read the rest of How To Series: Customize Windows Vista Explorer